Thirty Years' View (Vol. II of 2)

"A constitution means ex vi termini, a guarantee of the rights, liberty, and security of a free people, and can never survive in the shape of dead formalities. It is a thing of life, and just and fair proportions; not the caput mortuum which the so-called Constitution of the United States has now become. Is there a Southern man who bears a soul within his ribs, who will consent to be governed by this vulgar tyranny," &c.

From public addresses:

"Under the operation of causes beyond the scan of man, we are rapidly approaching a great and important crisis in our history. The shadow of the sun has gone back upon the dial of American liberty, and we are rapidly hastening towards the troubled sea of revolution. A dissolution of the Union is our inevitable destiny, and it is idle for man to raise his puny arm to stem the tide of events," &c.

Another:

"We must form a separate government. The slaveholding States must all yet see that their only salvation consists in uniting, and that promptly too, in organizing a Southern confederacy. Should we be wise enough thus to unite, all California, with her exhaustless treasures, would be ours; all New Mexico also, and the sun would never shine upon a country so rich, so great and so powerful, as would be our Southern republic."

Another:

"By our physical power," said one of the foremost of those leaders, in a late speech to his constituents, "we can protect ourselves against foreign nations, whilst by our productions we can command their peace or support. The keys of their wealth and commerce are in our hands, which we will freely offer to them by a system of free trade, making our prosperity their interest – our security their care. The lingering or decaying cities of the South, which before our Revolution carried on all their foreign commerce, buoyant with prosperity and wealth, but which now are only provincial towns, sluggish suburbs of Boston and New York, will rise up to their natural destiny, and again enfold in their embraces the richest commerce of the world. Wealth, honor, and power, and one of the most glorious destinies which ever crowned a great and happy people, awaits the South, if she but control her own fate; but, controlled by another people, what pen shall paint the infamous and bloody catastrophe which must mark her fall?"

From fourth of July toasts:

"The Union: A splendid failure of the first modern attempt, by people of different institutions, to live under the same government.

"The Union: For it we have endured much; for it we have sacrificed much. Let us beware lest we endure too much; lest we sacrifice too much.

"Disunion rather than degradation.

"South Carolina: She struck for the Union when it was a blessing; when it becomes a curse, she will strike for herself.

"The Compromise: 'The best the South can get.' A cowardly banner held out by the spoilsman that would sell his country for a mess of pottage.

"The American Eagle: In the event of a dissolution of the Union, the South claims as her portion, the heart of the noble bird; to the Yankees we leave the feathers and carcass.

"The South: Fortified by right, she considers neither threats nor consequences.

"The Union: Once a holy alliance, now an accursed bond."

Among the multitude of publications most numerous in South Carolina and Mississippi, but also appearing in other slave States, all advocating disunion, there were some (like Mr. Calhoun's letter to the Alabama member which feared the chance might be lost which the Wilmot Proviso furnished) also that feared agitation would stop in Congress, and deprive the Southern politicians of the means of uniting the slave States in a separate confederacy. Of this class of publications here is one from a leading paper:

"The object of South Carolina is undoubtedly to dissolve this Union, and form a confederacy of slaveholding States. Should it be impossible to form this confederacy, then her purpose is, we believe conscientiously, to disconnect herself from the Union, and set up for an independent Power. Will delay bring to our assistance the slaveholding States? If the slavery agitation, its tendencies and objects, were of recent origin, and not fully disclosed to the people of the South, delay might unite us in concerted action. We have no indication that Congress will soon pass obnoxious measures, restricting or crippling directly the institution of slavery. Every indication makes us fear that a pause in fanaticism is about to follow, to allow the government time to consolidate her late acquisitions and usurpations of power. Then the storm will be again let loose to gather its fury, and burst upon our heads. We have no hopes that the agitation in Congress, this or next year, will bring about the union of the South."

Enough to show the spirit that prevailed, and the extraordinary and unjustifiable means used by the leaders to mislead and exasperate the people. The great effort was to get a "Southern Congress" to assemble, according to the call of the Nashville convention. The assembling of that "Congress" was a turning point in the progress of disunion. It failed. At the head of the States which had the merit of stopping it, was Georgia – the greatest of the South-eastern Atlantic States. At the head of the presses which did most for the Union, was the National Intelligencer at Washington City, long edited by Messrs. Gales & Seaton, and now as earnest against Southern disunion in 1850 as they were against the Hartford convention disunion of 1814. The Nashville convention, the Southern Congress, and the Southern Press established at Washington, were the sequence and interpretation (so far as its disunion-design needed interpretation), of the Southern address drawn by Mr. Calhoun. His last speech, so far as it might need interpretation, received it soon after his death in a posthumous publication of his political writings, abounding with passages to show that the Union was a mistake – the Southern States ought not to have entered into it, and should not now re-enter it, if out of it, and that its continuance was impossible as things stood: Thus:

"All this has brought about a state of things hostile to the continuance of this Union, and the duration of the government. Alienation is succeeding to attachment, and hostile feelings to alienation; and these, in turn, will be followed by revolution, or a disruption of the Union, unless timely prevented. But this cannot be done by restoring the government to its federal character – however necessary that may be as a first step. What has been done cannot be undone. The equilibrium between the two sections has been permanently destroyed by the measures above stated. The Northern section, in consequence, will ever concentrate within itself the two majorities of which the government is composed; and should the Southern be excluded from all the territories, now acquired, or to be hereafter acquired, it will soon have so decided a preponderance in the government and the Union, as to be able to mould the constitution to its pleasure. Against this the restoration of the federal character of the government can furnish no remedy. So long as it continues there can be no safety for the weaker section. It places in the hands of the stronger and the hostile section, the power to crush her and her institutions; and leaves no alternative but to resist, or sink down into a colonial condition. This must be the consequence, if some effectual and appropriate remedy is not applied.

"The nature of the disease is such, that nothing can reach it, short of some organic change – a change which will so modify the constitution as to give to the weaker section, in some one form or another, a negative on the action of the government. Nothing short of this can protect the weaker, and restore harmony and tranquillity to the Union by arresting effectually the tendency of the dominant section to oppress the weaker. When the constitution was formed, the impression was strong that the tendency to conflict would be between the larger and smaller States; and effectual provisions were accordingly made to guard against it. But experience has proved this to be a mistake; and that instead of being as was then supposed, the conflict is between the two great sections which are so strongly distinguished by their institutions, geographical character, productions and pursuits. Had this been then as clearly perceived as it now is, the same jealousy which so vigilantly watched and guarded against the danger of the larger States oppressing the smaller, would have taken equal precaution to guard against the same danger between the two sections. It is for us, who see and feel it, to do, what the framers of the constitution would have done, had they possessed the knowledge, in this respect, which experience has given to us; that is, to provide against the dangers which the system has practically developed; and which, had they been foreseen at the time, and left without guard, would undoubtedly have prevented the States forming the Southern section of the confederacy, from ever agreeing to the constitution; and which, under like circumstances, were they now out of, would for ever prevent them entering into the Union. How the constitution could best be modified, so as to effect the object, can only be authoritatively determined by the amending power. It may be done in various ways. Among others, it might be effected through a re-organization of the Executive Department; so that its powers, instead of being vested, as they now are, in a single officer, should be vested in two, to be so elected, as that the two should be constituted the special organs and representatives of the respective sections in the Executive Department of the government; and requiring each to approve of all the acts of Congress before they become laws. One might be charged with the administration of matters connected with the foreign relations of the country; and the other, of such as were connected with its domestic institutions: the selection to be decided by lot. Indeed it may be doubted, whether the framers of the constitution did not commit a great mistake, in constituting a single, instead of a plural executive. Nay, it may even be doubted whether a single magistrate, invested with all the powers properly appertaining to the Executive Department of the government, as is the President, is compatible with the permanence of a popular government; especially in a wealthy and populous community, with a large revenue, and a numerous body of officers and employées. Certain it is, that there is no instance of a popular government so constituted which has long endured. Even ours, thus far, furnishes no evidence in its favor, and not a little against it: for, to it the present disturbed and dangerous state of things, which threaten the country with monarchy or disunion, may be justly attributed."

The observing reader, who may have looked over the two volumes of this View, in noting the progress of the slavery agitation, and its successive alleged causes for disunion, must have been struck with the celerity with which these causes, each in its turn, as soon as removed, has been succeeded by another, of a different kind; until, at last, they terminate in a cause which ignores them all, and find a new reason for disunion in the constitution itself! in that constitution, the protection of which had been invoked as sufficient, during the whole period of the alleged "aggressions and encroachments." In 1835, when the first agitation manifesto and call for a Southern convention, and invocation to unity and concert of action, came forth in the Charleston Mercury, entitled "The Crisis," the cause of disunion was then in the abolition societies established in some of the free States, and which these States were required to suppress. Then came the abolition petitions presented in Congress; then the mail transmission of incendiary publications; then the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia; then the abolition of the slave trade between the States; then the exclusion of slavery from Oregon; then the Wilmot Proviso; then the admission of California with a free constitution. Each of these, in its day, was a cause of disunion, to be effected through the instrumentality of a Southern convention, forming a sub-confederacy, in flagrant violation of the constitution, and effecting the disunion by establishing a commercial non-intercourse with the free States. After twenty years' agitation upon these points, they are all given up. The constitution, and the Union, were found to be a "mistake" from the beginning – an error in their origin, and an impossibility in their future existence, and to be amended into another impossibility, or broken up at once.

The regular inauguration of this slavery agitation dates from the year 1835; but it had commenced two years before, and in this way: nullification and disunion had commenced in 1830 upon complaint against protective tariff. That being put down in 1833 under President Jackson's proclamation and energetic measures, was immediately substituted by the slavery agitation. Mr. Calhoun, when he went home from Congress in the spring of that year, told his friends, That the South could never be united against the North on the tariff question – that the sugar interest of Louisiana would keep her out – and that the basis of Southern union must be shifted to the slave question. Then all the papers in his interest, and especially the one at Washington, published by Mr. Duff Green, dropped tariff agitation, and commenced upon slavery; and, in two years, had the agitation ripe for inauguration on the slavery question. And, in tracing this agitation to its present stage, and to comprehend its rationale, it is not to be forgotten that it is a mere continuation of old tariff disunion; and preferred because more available.

In June, 1833, at the first transfer of Southern agitation from tariff to slavery, Mr. Madison wrote to Mr. Clay:

"It is painful to see the unceasing efforts to alarm the South, by imputations against the North of unconstitutional designs on the subject of slavery. You are right, I have no doubt, in believing that no such intermeddling disposition exists in the body of our Northern brethren. Their good faith is sufficiently guaranteed by the interest they have as merchants, as ship-owners, and as manufacturers in preserving a union with the slaveholding States. On the other hand, what madness in the South to look for greater safety in disunion. It would be worse than jumping into the fire for fear of the frying-pan. The danger from the alarms is, that pride and resentment excited by them may be an overmatch for the dictates of prudence; and favor the project of a Southern convention, insidiously revived, as promising by its counsels the best security against grievances of every kind from the North."

Nullification, secession, and disunion were considered by Mr. Madison as Synonymous terms, dangerous to the Union as fire to powder, and the danger increasing in all the Southern States, even Virginia. "Look at Virginia herself, and read in the Gazettes, and in the proceedings of popular meetings, the figure which the anarchical principle now makes, in contrast with the scouting reception given to it but a short time ago." Mr. Madison solaced himself with the belief that this heresy would not reach a majority of the States; but he had his misgivings, and wrote them down in the same paper, entitled, "Memorandum on nullification," written in his last days and published after his death. "But a susceptibility of the contagion in the Southern States is visible, and the danger not to be concealed, that the sympathy arising from known causes, and the inculcated impression of a permanent incompatibility of interests between the North and the South, may put it in the power of popular leaders, aspiring to the highest stations, to unite the South on some critical occasion, in a course that will end in creating a theatre of great though inferior extent. In pursuing this course, the first and most obvious step is nullification – the next, secession – and the last, a farewell separation. How near has this course been lately exemplified! and the danger of its recurrence, in the same or some other quarter, may be increased by an increase of restless aspirants, and by the increasing impracticability of retaining in the Union a large and cemented section against its will." – So wrote Mr. Madison in the year 1836, in the 86th year of his age, and the last of his life. He wrote with the pen of inspiration, and the heart of a patriot, and with a soul which filled the Union, and could not be imprisoned in one half of it. He was a Southern man! but his Southern home could not blind his mental vision to the origin, design, and consequences of the slavery agitation. He gives to that agitation, a Southern origin – to that design, a disunion end – to that end, disastrous consequences both to the South and the North.

Mr. Calhoun is dead. Peace to his manes. But he has left his disciples who do not admit of peace! who "rush in" where their master "feared to tread." He recoiled from the disturbance of the Missouri compromise: they expunge it. He shuddered at the thought of bloodshed in civil strife: they demand three millions of dollars to prepare arms for civil war.